Arab Yugoslavia?

[Ivo Skoric]

A couple of weeks ago I read somewhere in American press a sentence 
in which Iraq was called an Arab Yugoslavia.  I think it was Thomas 
Friedman, but I am not sure. The comparison intrigued me ever since. 
Indeed, Saddam is a headstrong, defiant, ruthless leader, just like Tito 
was. And he also routinely plays both sides, buying weapons both from 
the U.S. and U.S.S.R. in the past.

But that’s about where the similarity ends. Saddam is at the same time 
vastly more brutal and vastly more gullible than Tito was. And Tito, 
during his lifetime, while having Yugoslav companies build Saddam’s 
dams, bridges and bunkers, never quite befriended Saddam as he did 
Egypt’s Naser and even the shah of Iran. A bullet in the back in some 
dark alley, or a house arrest in a villa on the coast of Adriatic - Tito 
preferred his opponents to disappear quietly, leaving no stains on the 
white gloves that he loved to wear so much. 

Public hangings were unheard of in former Yugoslavia. Or the way how 
Saddam got rid of the leader of Shiite’s in the South: he arrested him and 
his daughter, made him watch the rape and torture of his daughter, then 
had his beard set ablaze and waited for the fire to catch up the turban on 
his head. This is kind of a punishment that many people may have 
contemplated for Osama Bin Laden. But things like that did not happen 
in former Yugoslavia during the Tito’s reign.

In that respect, Saddam is more similar to Milosevic. He is like Milosevic 
on steroids. Where would that put him in the arcade of former Yugoslav 
warlords? With Arkan, possibly. After all, Saddam’s entry level position 
in the Baath party of his youth, was that of an assassin. And just like 
Milosevic, and very much unlike Tito, Saddam had made a Jerry Springer 
show out of his family, ultimately having to execute husbands of his 
daughters to please his sons.

Yugoslavia had that enriched uranium, recently evacuated from Vinca 
Institute near Belgrade, for ages. And both Serbia and Croatia had the 
human and technological resources to build a nuclear device. Yet, 
nobody touched that rods, once Tito declared that Yugoslavia 
abandoned building a bomb. Tito, unlike Saddam or Milosevic, knew 
when he was seriously expected not to lie, which is a trait that marks 
strongmen that die of old age, like Tito did.

And back at the end of the WW II, Tito had an opportunity to invade 
Trieste, an Italian city that sneaks to the top of the former Yugoslav top 
of the Adriatic coast. It was as much a part of Yugoslavia, as Kuwait was 
a part of Iraq. Yet, despite all the saber rattling and fiery speeches, Tito 
ultimately let that opportunity go, anticipating the negative reaction of 
the West. Saddam, on the other hand, allowed himself to be dragged as a 
headless puppet from war to war - in Iran, where he essentially fought as 
a proxy for the U.S. interest, and in Kuwait, where he was baited into a 
trap to cut him to a size.

It is also important to note that the economic backdrop of Iraq and former 
Yugoslavia is quite different as well: Tito’s Yugoslavia owed its position 
in the world primarily because of its geopolitical placement, Saddam’s 
Iraq owes that position to the oil reserves under the Iraqi soil. The 
ancient merchant walled city of Dubrovnik is to the trading routes cross-
roads of former Yugoslavia, what a tiny oil-rich emirate of Kuwait is to 
the 2nd world’s oil reserves holding Iraq. As Dubrovnik was a 
concentrate of what appealing the world saw in Yugoslavia, Kuwait is a 
concentrate of what appealing the world sees in Iraq. And the reaction of 
the world to the Yugoslav Army shelling Dubrovnik and Iraqi Army 
attacking Kuwait, was therefore predictably one of disapproval.

Saddam for years fashioned himself as an Arab Stalin. He even trimmed 
his moustache the Stalin’s way. And he made his entire cabinet trim their 
moustaches the same way. So, now they all look like clones of Stalin. 
Unlike Stalin, however, Saddam doesn’t have a Politburo. He IS the 
Politburo. When he grabbed the power, he seated himself at the top of 
parliament, and gave a speech spelling out that some of the deputies are 
traitors, in the same blunt, tactless way, in which the  president Bush 
recently told that U.S. Senate does not care about the security of 
American people.

Saddam’s words in Iraq, however, had much more weight than Bush’s in 
the U.S. Because, Saddam then proceeded to list names of the traitors, 
and as a name would be read, security guards would take the deputy out, 
until, finally, a couple of deputies started singing praises to generosity 
and mercifulness of their enlightened leader, to try to shut him up and 
make him stop reading names, before they get taken out of the room, too. 
That kind of unchecked power is unheard of in any Western society - it 
is incomprehensible - not even Hitler or Stalin could do that.

That “personal touch” of a medieval king from feudal Europe, was also 
present in the Saddam’s most recent decision to grant general amnesty 
to all the prisoners. Murderers were released pending an agreement from 
victim’s families (an agreement that the victims families would abstain 
from customary required revenge killing if the murderer is released). So 
far, Saddam granted near autonomy to Kurds, that he used to bath in 
mustard gas, and he released Shiite political opponents, after setting the 
head of their leader ablaze. He also granted amnesty to Iraqi exiles, luring 
them back into patriotic fold, now that the West wants them to work 
against him.

This particular part of the play is a deja vu of the wars for Yugoslav 
succession. Only there the dissidents and exiles were pardoned by the 
new nationalist leaders as a part of the fundraising effort to gather 
resources for war. Saddam is trying to be Milosevic, Tudjman and Thaci 
in the same person. Trying to pre-empt the foreign sponsored separatist 
war against him, he is creating a chaos that would have only one 
common denominator: support for him. Ok, that’s a cunning ploy, but we 
need to remember that he also granted amnesty to his son-in-law, when 
he fled to Jordan and spilled out the beans to the West about the 
weapons programs. Poor dude was beheaded as soon as he reached Iraqi 
border.

Ivo

ps - recently I saw a picture of T. Friedman - he looks like Saddam - 
maybe CIA can assassinate Saddam and clandestinely replace him with 
Friedman - nobody in Iraq would dare ask a question anyway - and 
Friedman can then run Iraq for the U.S., saving billions of dollars and 
thousands of lives that could be lost in the war.
Ivo Skoric
1773 Lexington Ave
New York NY 10029
212.369.9197
ivo at balkansnet.org
http://balkansnet.org